Tag: design

• The Life-Sized City

  I just discovered a new video series by TVO called, The Life-Sized City. It’s all about the “anatomy of the modern metropolis.” The first episode – which was released on Sep 13 – is on Medellin and is just under an hour long. I have a feeling that many of you will like this video series.

  Whenever I watch videos like this, it makes me think that I should be starting a city building-focused vlog. I am a big fan of this format. I follow a handful of vloggers. And I think it could be a lot of fun. But sometimes you just have to say no.

  For those of you who aren’t longtime readers, I would also like to point out that my good friend Alex Feldman wrote a guest post on this blog over 3 years ago following a trip to Medellin. It’s about what cities could learn from Medellin’s extraordinary turnaround. If you missed it, click here.

  2017.09.14

• Fall event roundup

  

  It’s still sunny and beautiful outside, so I don’t mean to be the one who prematurely calls fall. But I would like to get 3 Toronto events on your radar for the coming two months. 

  Full disclosure: These are all events that I support and/or my company supports in some way. 

  If you’re not based in Toronto and you don’t plan to be here this fall, you can stop reading right now and check back tomorrow. I promise to will try to be less Toronto-centric.

  1. EDIT: Expo for Design, Innovation and Technology, September 28 – October 8

  This is a 10-day immersive experience that will showcase how the intersection of design, technology and innovation can change the world. Think exhibits by Bruce Mau and Carlo Ratti; talks by David Suzuki and Scott Dadich (former editor-in-chief of WIRED and creator of the Netflix series The Art of Design); and projects spanning 3D-printed prosthetics to indigenous housing solutions. 70 speakers. 40 workshops. And over 150,000 sf of exhibits. Too much to write about here, but all topics and themes we frequently explore on this blog. Ticketing information here.

  2. NXT City Public Space Symposium, October 13 – 14

  This is a two day symposium about public space on a global stage. Talks. Public space tours. Round table sessions. And an epic after-party. Some of the speakers include Jeff Risom (Partner at Gehl Architects); Enrique Norten (Founder of TEN Arquitectos in Mexico City – and one of my grad school professors); and Mirik Milan (Amsterdam’s Night Mayor and someone who has gotten quite a bit of airtime on this blog). If you click here to grab your tickets, you’ll get 15% off. If for whatever reason that doesn’t work, use the code BDONN15.

  3. lost&gone: Romeo & Juliet, October 19 – 21 and October 27 – 28

  This is, I think, Toronto’s first truly immersive theater experience. For those of you who aren’t familiar, immersive theater is about turning the audience into participants of the production. It eliminates the “fourth wall” that traditionally divides audience and performers. I’ve heard great things about similar productions elsewhere in the world. The venue is a secret, so the show starts today with you having to try and figure out where it is in the core of Toronto. When you buy your tickets, you’ll also have to let them know if you’re a guest of the Capulets (Juliet’s family) or a guest of the Montagues (Romeo’s family). 

  Enjoy 🙂

  Photo by Brxxto on Unsplash

  2017.09.12

• REM

  

  “A building has at least two lives – the one imagined by its maker and the life it lives afterward – and they are never the same.” -Rem Koolhaas

  Tonight I went with a developer friend to see the documentary REM at the Hot Docs Cinema on Bloor Street. It’s a documentary about the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, directed by his son Tomas Koolhaas. Trailer here.

  The film is essentially 75 minutes of introspection on the part of Rem. It’s him ruminating over a continuous piece by the American composer Murray Hidary. At times it was hard to hear what Rem was actually saying.

  If you’re looking to learn the specifics of his designs and process, then this movie is not for you. Though there’s lots of footage of his buildings. It also does not make clear just how much influence he has had professionally. I mean, everyone from Bjarke Ingels to Jeanne Gang once worked at his firm.

  The film is really about getting inside the mind of Rem as he travels the world. What struck me is Rem’s profound curiosity for seemingly everything. He really is obsessed with analyzing, documenting, and reporting. He refers to it as a compulsion.

  I also like the idea put forward that architecture represents a particular moment in time. If you’re precise about things, you may be right the moment the building is complete.

  But from that point onward, everything begins to change around it and you will be wrong. That’s what the quote at the top of this post is getting at.

  So I enjoyed it – but probably because I’m an architecture geek and Rem is arguably the most influential living architect today. But I’m not going to tell you that this film is a must-see.

  P.S. Who knew, Rem Koolhaas flies economy.

  Photo by Pavan Trikutam on Unsplash

  2017.09.07

• MONAD, Vancouver

  

  Earlier today, Nithya Vijayakumar, of The Pembina Institute, pointed out the above housing project to me on Twitter through this 2013 Dwell article (worth a read).

  The project is called MONAD and it’s a 4-unit, 12,600 square foot prefabricated multi-storey building in Vancouver on West 4th Avenue. 

  The site itself is 33′ x 110′, which just so happens to be the same size as a typical single family lot in the city. However, this one sits on a main street.

  Completed in 2011 and designed by Lang Wilson Practice in Architecture Culture, the development was intended to be a pilot project and a rethink of urban living.

  There are real diseconomies when you develop at this scale, but if you make it high-end enough the math just may work. What a beauty.

  Above image from LWPAC. More photos here. 

  2017.09.06

• Smart sewers may soon analyze our poop

  

  On September 2, 2017, a research project by several MIT laboratories – called Gangnam Poop: Underworlds in Seoul – will debut at the Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism.

  Here’s an excerpt from the exhibition description:

  A vast reservoir of information on human health and behavior lies in our sewage, and this resource is untapped. We imagine a future in which sewage is mined for information that can inform policy makers, health practitioners, designers, and researchers alike. Such is the idea behind Underworlds: a cross-disciplinary data platform for monitoring urban health patterns, shaping more inclusive public health strategies, and pushing the boundaries of urban epidemiology.
  

  For this exhibition and “proof of concept”, they analyzed three distinct neighborhoods in Seoul, using an aptly named sewer robot called Luigi. 

  Gangnam-gu (shown above) is an upper-class high-rise residential area. Mapo-gu is an emerging artist and designer enclave. And Seongbuk-bu is a hillside village with detached houses and an older demographic.

  In each case, they mapped out the bacterial populations found beneath each neighborhood. Interestingly enough, the different areas revealed different bacterial occurrences. You can see those diagrams here.

  I often think of healthcare as being very reactive. A future like the one this exhibition is imagining would be far more proactive. And that would be a very good thing.

  Image and project by MIT Senseable City Lab. Gangnam Poop: Underworlds in Seoul. Commissioned by Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism

  2017.09.01

• Why I write about tech on my city building blog

  

  I had a friend ask me this week about how I decide what to write on this blog. His comment was that I tend to write about a variety of different topics. He wondered: Isn’t it better to focus on one particular niche?

  The simple answer is that I write about what interests me. And secondary to that is any concern around what will get the most clicks. In fact, I try not to fall into the trap of worrying about the latter. Sometimes it can be paralyzing to fixate on what will appeal most to the tens of thousands of people who read this blog on a regular basis.

  The reality is that my interests are much broader than, say, just design and real estate; though these two topics are clearly central. 

  I learned a long time ago while studying architecture and art history that what we make as a society is generally a product of the cultural milieu at the time. In other words, the built environment doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is the physical manifestation of what we believe to be true at a particular moment.

  Today, it’s pretty hard to ignore the importance of tech. Think of some of the most valuable companies in the world right now: Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and so on. Now, technology has always shaped our cities, but what makes this moment different is the decisive shift toward software.

  It’s arguably no longer about who can build the best mousetrap. It’s about who can build the best software layer on top of that mousetrap.

  In 2011, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (previously the co-founder of Netscape) published a widely shared essay called, “Why Software Is Eating the World.” And over the past 6 years he has been proven to be very right.

  The 3 main points he aimed to make with that essay are as follows:

  1. Every product or service that can become software will become software.
  2. Every company will have to become a software company.
  3. The winning companies will be the best software companies.

  Depending on your industry, this may sound ludicrous to you. Certainly in 2011 it probably seemed that way. 

  But a perfect example of this phenomenon is the iPhone. The phone itself is manufactured in China, albeit where a lot of great hardware innovation is taking place. 

  But at this point, phones have become fairly commoditized. The profits that Apple makes from the iPhone disproportionately come from the software layer and the app ecosystem it has developed.

  You could make a similar argument with Tesla. Autonomous navigation – which most of us can agree will have a profound impact on cities – is largely a software challenge. 

  And so if you believe that autonomous vehicles will be a fundamental part of the future of mobility, then it’s not that hard to believe in point number three: the winning car company will also have to be the best car software company.

  Some industries have been less touched by tech and software – real estate being one of them. But if Andreessen is right and it’s not a question of if, but a question of when, then it behooves all of us to think about the potential impacts.

  I love how Andreessen ends this podcast discussion with Barry Ritholtz of Bloomberg and so I’m going to repeat it here to close out this post. He says: “There are no bad ideas. There are only early ideas.” 

  And that’s why I write about tech on my city building blog.

  Photo by Michal Pechardo on Unsplash

  2017.08.25

• The Hong Kong window ledge

  

  My friends at the architecture practice Valente Rodgers told me something fascinating about the Hong Kong real estate market last night. Both partners worked as architects in Hong Kong for a number of years.

  In Hong Kong, you’re allowed to deduct certain projecting windows from your calculation of Gross Floor Area. 

  This is provided they’re a certain height above the finished floor level, they don’t project beyond certain distances from the outer face of the building’s structural elements, and so on. The precise measurements seem to vary depending on things like the building’s use.

  Since space is such a precious commodity in Hong Kong, it shouldn’t surprise you that lots of developers and architects take advantage of this. The result being a proliferation of these projecting window ledges all across the city. 

  It’s a phenomenon that happens in many cities when a perfectly legal loophole is found in the land use policies.

  In Toronto it used to be solariums. You could also deduct these from your overall GFA, which means a lot of them them got built in condos and apartments of a certain vintage.

  In New Orleans it was the camelback house. These were houses with a single storey toward the street and a second storey toward the rear of the property. This was done because property taxes were assessed based on the height of the house as it met the street. Pushing the density toward the rear of the lot meant homeowners weren’t taxed more. 

  I find these outcomes fascinating because they have absolutely nothing to do with architectural intent and everything to do with trying to optimize within a given framework.

  But what’s even more interesting about the Hong Kong example are some of the downstream externalities.

  Firstly, it sounds to me like these projecting windows have become a normal part of underwriting projects in Hong Kong. Meaning, if you don’t factor in these projections, you’re effectively giving up free GFA. (Can anyone familiar with the HK market confirm this?)

  However, building these projections also means you can’t do unmodulated and clean floor-to-ceiling windows. And if that’s the desired aesthetic, somebody has got to be willing to pay for that “luxury.” So arguably there’s a socioeconomic dimension to having and not having this ledge.

  Secondly, because space comes at such a premium, these ledges are fully taken advantage of and furniture makers have responded by designing pieces that can dovetail with them.

  Below is a photo of a bedroom in Hong Kong that I found on bohemia.life:

  

  This may be a custom bed and I don’t know how deep that window projection is, but it begins to show you how valuable these ledges can be from a space perspective.

  I think we should try and come up with a name to describe these sorts of built form phenomena. If you have any ideas, please drop them in the comments below. And if any of you are familiar with the HK market, let me know if I’m off the mark with any of the above.

  Photo by Jason Wong on Unsplash

  2017.08.12

• Skip-stop

  After Junction House was announced, an interesting discussion emerged on Twitter around 2 storey suite designs.

  There are, of course, many examples of multi-level apartments in the city. There’s 75 Portland by CORE Architects. There’s District Lofts and Mozo by architectsAlliance. And there’s Village by the Grange (pointed out during the discussion), which has a number of 2 and even 3 storey suites.

  Another example that was raised by Gil Meslin is 14 Blevins Place. Now demolished, Blevins Place was designed in 1955 and completed in 1957 as part of the Regent Park South urban renewal project. It was designed by the British-born Toronto architect Peter Dickinson and by Page + Steele.

  In 2005, prior to its demolition, the building was identified as a listed heritage building, but it was never elevated to a designated heritage building.

  Perhaps most notable about the building are its “skip-stop corridors” and its 2 storey suites. See below images taken from this Heritage Impact Assessment by ERA Architects.

  

  The reality is that modern architecture has had a long history of employing multi-level units and skip-stop corridors. Le Corbusier and Oscar Neimeyer were said to be experimenting with them as far back as the 1930s.

  But I think most would agree that Toronto is a very different city today compared to what it was in the 1950s. Some still believe that no child should grow up in an apartment, but I disagree with that belief system. I lived in an apartment as a kid and somehow I survived.

  2017.08.07

• Introducing Junction House

  

  Earlier this week I posted this teaser photo on social (full photo above) and said to stay tuned for a big announcement. Well, that announcement is here and you can read all about it over on the Globizen blog. Please let me know what you think in the comment section below.

  2017.08.05

• Just put up a sign

  Back before the 2008 financial crisis, I did a short stint working for a real estate developer in Dublin, Ireland. 

  Most of our projects were in Ireland, but our consultant teams were sometimes from all over.

  One day we were having a meeting with our architect from Germany and we started talking about a particular project’s green space.

  But this wasn’t the sort of green space that was supposed to be actively used. It was a green space that, I guess, you were just supposed to look at and admire for its greenness. 

  So one of my Irish colleagues asked, while referencing the proposed design: “How are we going to keep people off the grass?”

  Our German friends didn’t immediately appreciate the concern and responded with: “What do you mean?”

  Irish: “How will we stop people from walking and hanging out on the grass?”

  German with serious face: “Oh. We will put up a sign.”

  At that point, every Irish person in the room just started laughing and more or less said: “Yeah, that’ll never work.”

  Cultural differences can be subtle.

  2017.08.04